Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/385

 Territory had repudiated them and set a price upon their heads. There was a rumor widely circulated in camp to the effect that one or two of these scouts had never been indicted for murder; it was generally suspected that Stanton himself was at the bottom of this, in his anxiety to secure a better name for his corps. There were very few of them who couldn't claim the shelter of the jails of Cheyenne, Denver, and Omaha by merely presenting themselves, and confessing certain circumstances known to the police and detectives of those thriving boroughs. Many a night Joe Wasson, Strahorn, and I sat upon our saddles, to be sure that we should have them with us at sunrise. One of the most important of these volunteers was "Ute John," a member of the tribe of the same name, who claimed to have been thoroughly civilized and Christianized, because he had once, for six months, been "dlivin' team fo' Mo'mon" in Salt Lake. "Ute John" was credited by most people with having murdered his own grandmother and drunk her blood, but, in my opinion, the reports to his detriment were somewhat exaggerated, and he was harmless except when sober, which wasn't often, provided whiskey was handy. "John's" proudest boast was that he was a "Klischun," and he assured me that he had been three times baptized in one year by the "Mo'mon," who had made him "heap wash," and gave him "heap biled shirt," by which we understood that he had been baptized and clad in the garments of righteousness, which he sorely needed. "Ute John" had one peculiarity: he would never speak to any one but Crook himself in regard to the issues of the campaign. "Hello, Cluke," he would say, "how you gittin' on? Where you tink dem Clazy Hoss en Settin' Bull is now, Cluke?"

We had a difficult time marching down the Tongue, which had to be forded thirteen times in one day, the foot-soldiers disdaining the aid which the cavalry was ordered to extend by carrying across all who so desired. The country was found to be one gloomy desolation. We crossed the Rosebud Mountains and descended into the Rosebud Creek, where trails were found as broad and distinct as wagon-roads; the grass was picked clean, and the valley, of which I wrote so enthusiastically in the spring, was now a desert. We discovered the trap which "Crazy Horse" had set for us at the Rosebud fight on the 17th of June, and confidence in Crook was increased tenfold by the knowledge